Abilities
by instrument trio
Summary: Mikoto remains proud of her eldest son, even as he stands poised to push her into oblivion. R&R, if at all possible.


Hey, it's Aki. Again. Just here to warn you of the depression and drama that haunts this one-shot. Don't sue me if this doesn't tickle your fancy; it's just been stuck in my brain for a while now. Ah, well. On with the histrionics.

**Disclaimer:** Thank your lucky stars that I don't own Naruto.

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"You're doing the right thing." The woman says, watching him with bright, coal-black eyes.

"How do you know," He says blankly as he wipes his father's blood from his sword. The man lies in the corner of the darkened room, bleeding from stab wounds from which he felt no pain.

"I'm proud of you." She answers in a quivering voice. The rag pauses halfway down the length of steel, and Itachi turns to stare at his mother. She blinks at her hands, which are shaking with an unquenchable fear of death. To him, she doesn't look like the grown woman he's always known, but rather the quaint, out-of-town girl she must have been decades ago, nervous to tears on her wedding day. He can imagine her hyperventilating, about to be married into a clan that could never give her back what she had lost. She tentatively looks up at him, and he flinches away from her gaze. "Will it… Will it hurt?" She asks tremulously, almost childishly.

"No," says Itachi firmly. "No, it won't. I'll make sure of it."

Mikoto smiles with trembling lips, and he feels as if maybe he should smile back… but he can't. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to smile again in his life.

"Itachi," She says softly. "Please. Don't… Sasuke…"

"Don't worry." Itachi attempts to beat down the weakness bleeding into his voice. "I could never."

She lets out a huff of relief and reaches for him. He hesitates for a moment, but eventually he accepts her outstretched arms around his neck; feels her heartbeat in the hollow of her throat. After a moment, she pulls away, drifting her thumbs over his cheekbones. "You're being so brave."

He jerks out of her grasp altogether. "If I were truly brave, I would be dead." He stares at the corpse of his father and suffers the weight of his murder. "I _should _be dead, rather than agreeing to do this…"

"No," She blinks her teary, dark eyes and tugs lightly on his long hair. "Better that the Uchiha face justice at the hands of one of their own, rather than being butchered by some heartless ANBU."

Itachi does not have the heart to remind her that _he_ is a heartless ANBU.

"Besides," Her voice shakes. "Now your brother will have opportunity. The chance to live without the stares and the whispers. Like a real person should." _Like we never got to._

Her unsaid words hang between them like a beautiful, terrible gossamer web.

"He will hate me." And he feels idiotic for a moment, instead of evil, when he realizes that after everything he's done (all the people he's killed, all the lives he's ruined), all he's really worried about is the fact that his little brother will not adore him anymore.

Mikoto seems to understand, though, as she peers at him through the haze of her sorrow. "He will not understand you," She admits with a strange, knowing smile. "But give him time. Somewhere along the line, he will know what you have done for him. After all," She touches his shoulders, remembering the day she first held him. "The truth will out."

So she takes him into her arms one last time, gathering all that is left of her oldest child in order to delay the inevitable – some hope still lingers in her that maybe this will _not_ be the end. She clutches at him, her heart breaking at their situation and the fact that it is _he_ who will have to live with it for the rest of his life.

Finally Itachi can take it no more. "Mother," He whispers, and feels her shrink into his chest. "It's time."

Mikoto gasps in terror, panic and adrenaline seeping into her blood, and Itachi has to take her shoulders to keep her from bucking away. He maneuvers her until she stares straight into his eyes. Slowly, the tomoe begin to spin.

"I love you," She says through lips stiff with dread and grief.

"I know." His reply is deadened by what he is about to do, and he cannot bear to tell her that he loves her too for the same reason.

Itachi pours all that remains of his innocence into his mother's last world, spinning up flowers in field as far as anyone could see, spreading out such a flat earth as no one could find anywhere near Konoha. He creates the sort of unhindered vision that he knows his mother adores, in the colors of bright blues and greens, instead of the red and black of the clan that took her in and tied her down.

She materializes in the midst of the blossoms, just shy of sixteen. She spins around once or twice, letting out a guileless laugh he had never heard from her on earth. Mikoto is once again the young, carefree country girl of her youth; the girl she should liked to have remained forever. She looks back at him with a smile full of white, crooked teeth and raises her hand in a wave goodbye. He lifts a hand in return… the same hand he uses moments later to end her life.

After finishing his task, stabbing her in the back until the blood flows no more, he turns her over and lays her in the center of the room. A small smile hangs on her lips, and he mashes his own lips together in an effort to hold back a sob. He has succeeded – bringing him into the world may have been agonizing for her, but he has made sure that her way out of it has been painless.

And yet, as he stares at Sasuke's panicked face not fifteen minutes later, he feels as if someone is slitting _his_ throat and stabbing _him_ in the back. A gloss of heartlessness descends upon him as he looks in to his brother's horrified eyes, and he lets them swallow him like the hellish abyss he can now send his own enemies to.

"To test my abilities."

Abilities useless when facing the dead.

--


End file.
